Baker Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, right, manages his shop Monday, June 4, 2018, in Lakewood, Colo. The Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of Phillips, who wouldn't make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. (David Zalubowski/AP)

Pundits who quickly dismissed the Supreme Court’s decision in favor of the Colorado baker in Masterpiece Cakeshop as so narrowly tailored as to be insignificant missed the point. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion affirmed a respected role for religion in American society — and affirmed New York’s long-standing respect for religious values.

At the core of the decision was a nifty bit of legal jiu-jitsu. Instead of beginning with the question of whether Colorado baker Jack Phillips violated the rights of Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins by refusing to create a wedding cake for them, it first asked if the Colorado Civil Rights Commission treated Phillips and his religious faith fairly.

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The Court determined that Colorado acted with “religious hostility,” and so set aside its order penalizing Phillips.

That hostility was in evidence in two distinct ways. It began with the Commission’s obvious double standard. As Kennedy observed, while it dismissed Phillips’ plea to avoid being compelled to deliver a message with which he had a profound religious disagreement, the commission did permit three other bakers to refuse to sell cakes to customers who ordered them with messages demeaning same-sex marriage.

The Court was even more offended by the religious disparagement publicly offered by a Commission member: “Religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history . . .to me that is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use – to use their religion to hurt others.”

Kennedy trenchantly noted that there was “no objection to these comments from other commissioners,” the state court ruling reviewing the Commission’s decision “did not mention those comments, much less express concern with their content,” and the “comments by the Commissioners were not disavowed by the briefs filed” in this case.

Properly understood, Kennedy’s decision stands for this: Religious values will sometimes trump a state’s authority, while at other times must yield to it, but at all times those religious values must be treated by the state with complete respect.

That message is significant and important, and should not be lost in a myopic focus on whether the private plaintiff or state defendant will win the next case.

Among those who might benefit from Kennedy’s dressing down of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission are members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In 2016, the chairman of that august body used strikingly similar language to describe religion.

In a report ironically titled “Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties,” Commission Chairman Martin Castro wrote that “the phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except for hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism and homophobia.”

Monday’s decision served as a rebuke and a corrective to that display of religious hostility. It declared that religious rights deserve respect even when in conflict with other civil rights. It taught that the clashes arising at the intersection of religious and other fundamental rights can be addressed with nuance, balance and sensitivity.

That is a notion that New Yorkers understand. When the New York Court of Appeals last considered the interplay between religious and other rights, in a 2006 case involving a challenge to New York’s contraception mandate, it ruled for the state. But in doing so, the court held that New York’s Constitution was “more protective of religious exercise” than its federal counterpart.

The New York court rejected the “inflexible” federal rule that “no person may complain of a burden on religious exercise that is imposed by a generally applicable neutral, statute,” instead requiring that “the respective interests must be balanced to determine whether the incidental burdening is justified.”

That balancing is regularly on display throughout New York. It is why Catholic Charities continues to thrive as a partner with government in New York City and State even as its counterparts elsewhere have been forced to retrench. It is why here we provide funding for textbooks and library books, mandated services and security guards at more than 1,000 private and religious schools. And it is why the New York City Human Rights Commission was able to accommodate the religiously motivated request for women-only swimming hours at certain Brooklyn municipal pools.

New York is where the Bill of Rights was drafted and adopted, and perhaps that spirit that has protected religious life here. Kennedy has done the rest of the nation a great service by calling out states hastening the erosion of those rights.

Schick is a partner at Troutman Sanders.

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Charlie Craig and David Mullins in their home in Denver, Colorado. Denver-area baker, Jack Phillips, cited his Christian faith in refusing to make a cake for the gay couple's wedding celebration in 2012. (David Zalubowski/AP)